Pros and Cons of a Carbon Tax for the Energy Industry

Taylor Smith is a policy analyst for the Government Relations Department at The Heartland Institute. His responsibilities include interacting with elected officials and staff on energy and environment issues; tracking new legislation; and drafting responses to emerging issues via talking points, news releases, and op-ed pieces, with the goal of informing legislators about free-market ideas. He is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force, and has been published in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Washington Times, The Detroit News, and elsewhere.

A letter from a solar industry executive displayed a rare form of candidness that usually isn’t tolerated from other industries. John Bringenberg, vice president of the Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association’s board of directors, called for a “painful” carbon tax to be implemented on his industry’s many carbon-based competitors with also increased support for “non-carbon renewables” such as solar.

Since most people know a new tax on business will always get passed down to its consumers, Bringenberg isn’t hiding his self-interest very well when he says energy consumers should pay for a tax on solar’s competitors while also paying for increased subsidies for his own business. By doing so, it seems Bringenberg is more interested in having customers serve solar than solar serve its customers.